I was watching this video of a live chicken trapped on a moving truck and thought it was strange that it’s not possible to say anything to them even when circumstances might warrant it. All we got is honking and waving. There could be a touchscreen interface with a map of nearby vehicles. It could be voice controllable or the passenger could do it for safety.
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I keep a CB radio in my car, and have a few friends with them
It is actually really handy when you’re road tripping together in different cars to be able to just grab the mic and say something to the other vehicle when you need to stop for a bathroom break or you’re having an issue with your car or want to give them a heads-up about whatever.
If you’re fairly close together a set of cheap FRS walkie-talkies from Walmart does the job just as well. Probably worth stepping up to CB if you expect to lose sight of the other vehicle though, range is usually a bit better.
It’s especially handy if, like me, you go camping and such in rural areas with unreliable cell coverage.
You do occasionally also get helpful heads-ups from truckers if you’re listening to channel 19 about road conditions, police activity, traffic, etc. but mostly it’s just idiots babbling about conspiracy theories and immature bullshit.
Why is everyone so quick to recommend Walmart? Corpo advertising shouldn’t have a place on lemmy , intentional or not
Because they’re fucking everywhere, something like 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of one.
It’s basically shorthand for “this is a common and readily available thing that you can acquire anywhere in the country for cheap even if megacorps have driven all of the local specialty retailers out of business in your areas”
As opposed to something like a HF ham radio which is a specialty item that no big retailers like walmart, to the best of my knowledge, carry, and so you’re probably not going to be able to find it locally.
I get that it’s short hand for that --but I still don’t think it’s good to push people forward to stores with so many moral and economic issues like walmart as the first suggestion.
A simple trucker’s radio is a common item in gas stations and truck stops–not that they’re necessarily better than walmart, but they’re just as common and weren’t put forth as a suggestion
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A “truckers” (CB) radio is exactly what I was suggesting FRS radios as an alternative to.
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I suggested them because they are much simpler to use. With a mobile base station you need to figure out where to mount it in your car, where to mount an antenna, tune that antenna, how to hard-wire it into your car’s power (or splice an adapter onto it to power it from the cigarette lighter), whereas with a walkie talkie you just need to turn it on, put it on the right channel and push a button.
(Handheld CBs do exist. I’ve very rarely seen them for sale in a brick and mortar store)
- It’s probably gonna depend on where in the country you are, but CB radio equipment is in fact not commonly available at gas stations and truck stops around me. It’s something I actually actively look for and take notice of because I’m a bit of a radio geek. In fact, if I needed to tell someone where to get a CB locally, their best bet for that would probably also be the-store-whose-name-you-seem-too-think-that-no-one-should-say-like-its-fucking-voldemort-or-something, and even that would be hit or miss, some TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOSes don’t actually seem to carry them, but every TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOS I’ve ever been in absolutely has at least one set of FRS radios for sale.
the-store-whose-name-you-seem-too-think-that-no-one-should-say-like-its-fucking-voldemort-or-something,
Believe it or not. Shopping at unethical companies is unethical . I don’t like people advertising for a terrible corp. Especially a fascist corp.
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But I can buy that thing on eBay for 3X more plus shipping!
As evil as Walmart is it’s undeniable they do have everything you could think of under one roof. The idea isn’t awful if it wasn’t so harmful.
GMRS has mostly replaced CB now. Cheap and works better than CB at short range. Adoption has been slow, however.
CB radio? That shit is for truckers and nerds but it was solid.
Luckily, you’re on Lemmy, and we’re all nerds here
Use it all the time (UHF). But only get comms on other off-roaders, all the trucks, or caravamers. It’s very useful. I give out handhelds to friends if we’re travelling together.Honestly, phones are pretty shit in comparison.
I’m glad it’s not popular for other drivers, though. One of the main benefits is most people don’t use it, so the bands don’t get clogged with shit.
Bruh that’s just multiplayer game voice chat IRL. Imagine chaos and trolling.
And you get to hear their music peaking out whatever microphone is used for the car to car communication
Yeah, let’s add proximity chat to traffic. It’ll be great!
That sounds awful. But it does exist, its called a cb radio
Yeah my friend has a cb radio and he says when traffic is bad people are just yelling at each other. Although that’s anonymous, if the messages showed you were X person from C vehicle it would probably be a bit more civil
It’s called a CB radio. Enjoy.
If I can’t say “on screen” first then I don’t want it
You can just remember to say “Over” over.
Is the communications holofilter ready?
Engage the overlay. Put them on screen.
“sir they’re hailing us!”
“Thanks wife, put them through.”
“HEY FUCKER YOU DIDNT SIGNAL”
* my bad hand wave *
Many people would use such a method to troll and be disruptive, possibly causing collisions
BRETTS_NISSAN has just sent you an unsolicited dick pic
Yeah just like every online videogame with strangers. I would immediately mute it and never unmute.
Yeah no people are trash on average, I don’t want to get constantly pinged by trashy people while driving, I don’t even like proximity chat in games, imagine having that in real life, there’s a high chance of accidents happening due to distraction. Now if someone wants to add a little display on their car that can display some basic text messages, maybe that could be of some use
Hate to break it to you, but proximity chat is enabled in real life all the time.
People don’t have the balls to come up to you in real life and say the stuff they say from a place of saftey and anonymity.
Honking IS how you contact nearby vehicles.
CB radio still exists.
Lady honked at me the other day for not turning left at a light (she obviously didn’t see the motorcyclists) and began making rude gestures.
Well anyway it’s probably better that we can’t talk to each other.
I had a similar thing happen this week. Left turn lane waiting for pedestrian and their dog to cross the road. Person behind me was losing their minds at me. I pointed at the pedestrian and shrugged.
I once had someone flip me off because I put my turn signal on. We were in the right lane, I was turning right, and the left lane was completely empty.
Guess we’re supposed to mow them down, idk.
I absolutely would not want an open channel to everyone around me. The potential for abuse is too high.
Imagine the giant trucks road raging because you’re in the left lane and only going +20 the speed limit. Or the old creeps hitting on teenagers.
And then there’s the privacy concerns. In order to connect to your car-specifically- it has to know your car is there. Which means your car is constantly putting out a beacon. This would be similar to how cell phones work - and are now being used by merchants and advertisers like Walmart to track where you go in stores.
And then there’s the security concerns of people pushing malware.
And then there’s the question of distractions from having to respond to people reaching out or shutting them up or whatever.
A touch screen interface in a car is a TERRIBLE idea. Yeah a passenger could do it but only if there is a passenger in the car in the first place.
Maybe a manual dial to cycle through the available nearby vehicles then. The idea is just that there should be a way for it to be clear who you are contacting and where their vehicle is on the road relative to yours.
I do a lot of water sports in the UK and we use VHF radios. Certain frequencies are used by marinas and the like, and nearby boats will be tuned into them. Then there is a frequency used for emergency calls - the coastguard listens on that and answers, and will move your call to another frequency for more details, leaving the mayday one open again.
We mainly use VHF for boat-to-boat comms, or boat-to-shore. The local range is decent - a few miles from our base, depending on atmospheric conditions, obstacles etc. I honestly have no idea if you could use VHF radios between cars though. It’s not private for a start - everyone can hear you - and once someone is yammering on the marina frequency no-one else can transmit. So it’s just brief messages with protocols.
